Sunday, February 19 – In what I imagine
will be a regular feature, the first part of the show was a Trump recap,
covering the rally and #LastNightInSweden, the unhinged press conference , and
a nod for the stories that aren’t
getting covered in depth (such as the assassination of Kim Jong-un’s
half-brother) because of Trump’s constant onslaught of disasters. Vladimir Putin was the subject of the main
story, looking at the idea of what Trump’s repeatedly-expressed wish for the
U.S. to “get along better” with Russia might actually entail. It was interesting to see footage of how
seriously some Russian citizens take the ridiculous Putin photo ops, the list
of “coincidentally” deceased/discredited/jailed opponents was chilling, and I
loved John’s horror at what sort of “monster” works out in a $3000 track
suit. I enjoyed the show’s parody of the
Putin-themed pop number at the end, but it wasn’t half as crazy as the real
thing.
Monday, February 20 – The Daily Show is doing clip shows this week, each night covering a
different post-election subject. Tonight
was the end of the Obama era, bidding farewell to the 44th president
(and sanity in the White House.) For the
most part, it was fairly lengthy clips, showing several large chunks of a
handful of stories (McConnell’s mission to destroy Obamacare, baby-proofing the
White House before the arrival of President Trump, silly commentator amazement
over vacation Obama’s backwards baseball
hat, OMG!, etc.) I like that
approach better than just flitting from punchline to punchline. The episode also included clips from
different interviews that touched on Obama and his legacy – though I was
surprised there wasn’t anything from Trevor’s interview with Obama himself –
and they reaired the entire Key & Peele bit with Obama and Luthor one last
time (see what I did there?)
Tuesday, February 21 – The theme here was
“The Celebrity Appresident,” seemingly a Trump catch-all. His time as president-elect is mostly what’s covered here, along with a
little “bonus” Kellyanne Conway (I enjoyed the repeats of Trevor’s breakdown of
the “alternative facts” moment and Michelle’s piece on Conway’s bag of
tricks.) I suppose because Trump is a
nonstop source of satire-worthy material, this episode pulled from a lot more
stories and it was more of a canter
through punchlines, with a few longer clips here and there. No surprise, there were tweets galore,
ludicrous press conferences (sigh – remember the days when loading up a table with
blank manila folders was a trainwreck of a Trump press conference? that’d be
tame now,) hints of Russian shadiness, attacks on the media, and a heap of
general unpleasantness. It’s exhausting
to get all of it smashed into one half-hour.
Wednesday, February 22 – Here we got Trump’s
inauguration (plus the buildup/aftermath.)
More like Monday’s show, with more time spent on fewer stories, which is
definitely the way to go. Trevor’s impression
of Trump telling the “story” of his inauguration like he’s reading a fairy tale
to a bunch of CIA agents kills me, and Lewis’s glee at the many celebrities who
turned down their invites is still great.
It was encouraging to see the footage of the Women’s March again, and
they showed quite a bit of Jordan and Desi’s tag-team report covering both the
inauguration and the march. I have to
say, though, while they got in some good crowd-size jokes, I was really
surprised they didn’t include anything from Trevor’s riff equating Trump’s
crowd size with his manhood; they may have been dick jokes, but I thought they
were all excellently-made dick jokes, and I was expecting to see them again.
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